Very nice work on this product.

I saw in an earlier post that ability to launch a file from the HD would be available in the 2.18 timeframe. Curious if this is progressing still?

Sorry if it is in there and I didn't see it.

On a related note perhaps for future releases you can add a sticky to the top of the Forum with a running list of the release notes by version?

~KnoWei

Hi KnoWei, welcome on the forum !



Thank you very much



Indeed, it's not there yet... 2.18 was an estimate, and I was very wrong

To treat the movie addition requests, I had to develop a brand new process, very different from the way we previously built our database. And it took me much longer than expected. During this time, I could not work on adding new features to Coollector, but I kept releasing new versions to provide weekly database updates.

Adding movies on request is now fully functional. I still have some little things to improve, so launching files from the HD won't be available with the next version, but probably with the version afer (2.22)...



Look at the upper part of the screen, it's here:

HOME AWARDS HISTORY FORUM

Also, every time you update the program, you're proposed to read the versions history.

Thanks for the warm welcome and thanks for the pointer to History. Just what I was looking for.

I can appreciate the complexity of implementing the "Play from HD" feature so I'll be patient. Have you mapped out how you expect it to work?

I have my DVD collection ripped to ISO files to preserve the DVD structure but in a single file (i.e. no folder full of VOBs). These *.iso files are stored on a network drive. I double click on the file from Win Explorer and it loads into a virtual drive which launches my DVD player software.

Hopefully clicking on a link from w/in Coollector might work similarly?

~KnoWei

I don't think it will be much complex to implement. The real problem is that I'm busy with other things.



Yes, of course !

The program will let you select which directory you want to scan, and if you want to scan its subdirectories too. The program will try to associate a movie title with each mpg, avi, mov, divx, iso files (it'll be possible to define additional file extensions).

Let's suppose the program finds a file called "The Abyss.iso". It will add a new video to the movie "The Abyss". The video media type will be "iso", and the location field will hold the hard drive location, for instance "H:\Movies\The Abyss.iso". Hopefully it'll also be able to determine the video running time. And in case of series episodes, if the files are correctly named the program will be able to extract the season and episode number.

The program will be smart enough so, even if you scan a directory several times, there will be only 1 instance of the video. At the end of the directory scanning, the program will report which files could not be associated with a movie.

I'll add a "play" icon to the movie panel. If the movie has a video on hard drive, clicking the play icon will have the same effect as if you had clicked the file from Windows Explorer. If there's no file associated with the movie, you'll be proposed to pick a file from your hard drive (it'll be convenient if automatic scanning has failed).

If you have several video files for one movie, when you'll click the play icon you'll be asked which file you want to play. That may happen with series and series episodes... To tell the videos apart, the program will display the season and episode number. In the case of movies, you'll have to use the "edition" field. For instance, if a video is just the movie trailer, you'll set the edition to "trailer".

What do you think of my solution ? Do you have some ideas to propose ?

Thanks. This solution sounds like it will work well in my situation so I like it.

I'll give it some thought to see if I can add anything. It seems pretty thorough. Thanks again for the detail.

~KnoWei

Finally getting back to the thread as promised.



It sounds like the use of "editions" will address individual titles that are released as multidisk sets or two sided disks.

As mentioned earlier in the thread I tend to back-up an entire DVD to an ISO image file. Several titles in my collection are either multi-disk with the movie on one disk and specials on the other(s) or they are two sided disks which result in an ISO file for each side - the equivalent of two disks. So having the ability to link to all of the ISO files that I have associated with a single title will be a definite plus. Then I can click through to the main disk or any of the specials from the Coollector title page.

It will be very nice if the user can have control of the "edition" tag that will allow us to name the edition type, e.g., movie, trailer, specials, widescreen, standard, etc. so that after clicking PLAY we can select the desired file.



Are you thinking about doing a scan everytime Coollector starts up or will it be launched manually? Maybe someday I'll deploy a RAID so I just have one giant disk. But for now I have two separate network drives (Movies A-L and Movies M-Z) so I'll want to be able to scan them both. Personally I like the ability to force a manual scan and be able to turn off automatic scan if I want.

~KnoWei

Yes, I think so. Can you see a problem ?


Of course you have control of the "edition" value, like with any other owned video. The only specificity of the videos on disk is that the "location" field holds the location on disk.


No, no. No scan on startup. Simply the "add" button will have a new option: to scan a directory to find video files. You select the directory, and the importation begins. If you scan the same directory multiple times, it won't have any negative effect, because the program won't allow 2 files to have the same "location" on disk.

A few more things:

1) if you try to read a video that doesn't exist anymore (deleted or moved), the program will propose to remove the video with a dead link.

2) if scanning finds a video for a movie, the program will check if there are other videos on disk (for this movie) and remove the dead links.

This way, you'll be able to move your files easily. For instance, let's suppose you move the directory that contains all your iso files, from drive C: to drive D:
After that, you'll just have to scan the new location on drive D: and the program will understand that the files were moved, and will simply adjust the "location" value.


P.S: I'm sorry, but this feature is delayed for yet another week. There's a site, DVDSpot.com, who's closing in 2 weeks, and I'm creating in a hurry a function to allow their former users to migrate easily to Coollector.

I've tried the program and I think it is excellent! I am, however, one of the old-timers at DVDSpot and I cannot even get my head around the idea of re-entering all 2500 of my titles. I will be on-board as soon as you have a migration path into Coolector...

Thanks!

-Toonces

Hi tooncestcat,

importing from DVDSpot will be available with Coollector 2.24.

If you want to immediatly participate in the beta testing of this new feature, please mail me your DVDSpot CSV file at:

beta at coollector dot com

Hector,

It's on the way to you. Actually, there are 2200 titles in the .csv file. I have another 300 or so that have been transferred from my LDs, or are not listed at DVDSpot. I've been a regular contributor there, but my list of "to do" titles is pretty large. I think I may have 5 or 6 that have been lost in the limbo of the contribution editor during their shut-down process.

Thanks!

-Toonces

Hi Cool Hector,

I'm resurrecting this thread because given your thorough explanation above it's sort of the defacto public spec for the Launch File from HDD.

One small detail that might be important for the "scan-to-add" functionality you are planning. I don't use spaces in my *.iso file names. So your example above of finding a file called "The Abyss.iso" in my system will be "THE_ABYSS.iso" with an underscore instead of a space between words. Admittedly it's a small detail but once you get it built and get to the testing phase if you can test for string recognition with the underscore that would be much appreciated.

Regards,
~KnoWei

Hi KnoWei !

Still a couple of weeks, and I'll finally add this long awaited "Launch File from HDD" feature.

The algorithm for scanning the hard drive is already written: I'll simply re-use my code from DVD Spot import (it has proven to work pretty well).

Underscore is not a problem at all, because the algorithm makes abstraction of any punctuation mark, lowercase or uppercase, leading article or not, accents, etc... It's not a dumb algorithm

No of course not!

I didn't mean to imply otherwise.

I was working with some files today and it occurred to me I sometimes run into Windows programs that don't like the underscore. That's what made me think of it.

It's good to know that you can reuse your DVDSpot import module for the scan feature.

I usually check the forum on the weekends so I'll be ready to test it all out when it's released -- but really, no hurry.

Regards,
~KnoWei

ok in the case of episode material, how should it be named?

IE

The Last Airbender0102 for season 1 episode 2
or
The Last Airbender[02][01]

season 1 episode 2?

there are so many ways to show such a thing, it would be nice to know the format which you plan to use in coolector, so i can change my files to the proper season episode referance number

Just one thing to make it work... you need to add a space after the name of the series.

=> "The Last Airbender 0102"
=> "The Last Airbender [02][01]"

Apart from that, it's as you like.

It's very simple: Coollector recognizes "The Last Airbender" and associates those videos to the series. After that, when you click the "play" icon, Coollector displays the name of all the associated video files, and you identify the season and episode thanks to whatever convention you've chosen.